Morris Chang is a smart man.
He helps make tiny computer parts. He started a very big company. This company helps the whole world. He worked very hard in school. Do you like to learn new things?
Morris Chang is a very smart man.
He studied hard in many schools. He went to big colleges in the United States.
He learned how to make tiny computer parts. These parts are used in many things. He helped make them better and faster.
Morris started a large company in Taiwan.
This company is one of the biggest in the world. It makes many computer chips.
He worked for many years to help technology grow. He even won special awards for his work. Many people thank him for his help.
He is a leader in the world of science. He showed how to build great things.
Morris Chang is a famous business leader. He is also an electrical engineer.
He was born in China in 1931. He moved to the United States to study. He went to many great schools. He earned degrees from MIT and Stanford. He even earned a doctorate, which is the highest degree in college.
Chang worked at many big companies. He worked at Texas Instruments for a long time. He learned how to make semiconductor chips. These are tiny parts that power electronics. He saw that factories in Asia were very good at making them. This gave him a big idea.
In 1987, he started a company called TSMC. This was the world's first semiconductor foundry. A foundry is a factory that makes chips for other companies. This was a new way to do business. Because of this, TSMC became one of the biggest chip makers in the world.
He won many awards for his work. One award was the Order of Propitious Clouds. His work helped make Taiwan a leader in technology.
Morris Chang is a famous business leader and an electrical engineer.
He was born in Ningbo, China, on July 10, 1931. His family moved many times due to wars in China. They lived in places like Hong Kong and Shanghai. Eventually, Chang moved to the United States to study. He wanted to learn about science and technology. He became a very successful person in the world of electronics. His work helped change how technology is made today.
Chang learned a lot through many years of hard study. He first went to Harvard University in 1949. He later moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He earned three different degrees from MIT by 1955. He also earned a doctorate from Stanford University in 1964. This doctorate is a very high level of study. He studied things like mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. This deep knowledge helped him understand how tiny parts work.
Before starting his own company, Chang worked for several big businesses. He worked at Sylvania Electric Products and Texas Instruments. At Texas Instruments, he rose to become a vice president. He saw how factories in different countries performed. He noticed that factories in Japan were very good at making chips. This helped him realize that advanced manufacturing might work best in Asia. In 1984, he also served as a leader at General Instrument Corporation.
In 1987, Chang did something very new and important. He founded the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, known as TSMC. He created the world's first semiconductor foundry. A foundry is a special factory that makes chips for other companies. Instead of making its own products, TSMC makes parts for others. This way of working is called the foundry model. This idea helped TSMC become one of the largest companies in Taiwan.
Because of his great work, Chang has received many honors. President Tsai Ing-wen gave him the Order of Propitious Clouds in 2018. She also gave him the Order of Dr. Sun Yat-sen in 2024. These are special awards for helping technology grow in Taiwan. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering. His success shows how one person's ideas can change an entire industry. Today, his company helps provide the tiny parts used in many machines. He is a key figure in the history of modern technology.
Morris Chang is a highly influential business executive and an electrical engineer.
He is best known as the founder of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC. This company changed the entire world of electronics. Chang pioneered a new way to build computer chips. This method is called the foundry model. Instead of designing its own products, a foundry focuses only on manufacturing chips for other companies. Because of this innovation, TSMC became one of the largest semiconductor companies in the world. Today, Chang is considered the founder of Taiwan's massive semiconductor industry.
Chang's journey began in Ningbo, China, on July 10, 1931. He was born into a middle-class family. His father, Chang Wei-kuan, was a bank manager with a Western education. Life was often uncertain for the family during Chang's childhood. The Second Sino-Japanese War caused the family to move many times. They lived in Nanjing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Chongqing, and Shanghai. By 1948, the Chinese Civil War forced the family to move to Hong Kong again. These early years of moving shaped his path toward a global career.
To pursue a career in science, Chang moved to the United States. He first enrolled at Harvard University in 1949. He was the only Chinese student among 1,100 undergraduates there. He studied applied physics and engineering sciences. Later, he transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to improve his engineering prospects. Chang was an incredibly hardworking student at MIT. He earned a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in mechanical engineering by 1953. He also earned a Master of Engineering in 1955. He worked as a research assistant to help pay for his tuition.
Chang's professional expertise grew through several major engineering roles. He first joined Sylvania Semiconductor, where he worked to improve the yield of germanium transistors. Yield refers to the percentage of working parts produced in a batch. In 1958, he moved to Texas Instruments (TI). He eventually became a group vice president at TI. While at TI, he studied a new way to price semiconductors. He suggested pricing them "ahead of the cost curve." This meant accepting lower profits early on to gain more customers. This strategy helped the company grow much larger over a long period of time.
After leaving Texas Instruments, Chang realized that the future of manufacturing was in Asia. He had observed that TI's factories in Japan were more efficient than those in the United States. He noticed that Japanese technicians had lower turnover rates. In 1984, he served as the president of General Instrument Corporation. Soon after, he returned to Taiwan to lead the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). In 1987, he used technology from Philips to found TSMC. The company was started with financing from Taiwan's National Development Fund. This move helped start a period where companies began outsourcing their manufacturing to Asia.
Chang's leadership led to massive economic success. TSMC became one of the most profitable chip makers on Earth. Chang served as CEO from 1987 to 2005. He later returned as CEO in 2009. His personal net worth is estimated at US$7 billion. Because of his impact, he has received many prestigious awards. In 2018, President Tsai Ing-wen gave him the Order of Propitious Clouds. In 2024, she awarded him the Order of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. These honors recognize his huge contributions to the technology in Taiwan.
Even after retiring from his main roles, Chang remains a significant figure in global technology discussions. He has served as a Presidential Envoy to APEC several times. He has also shared his views on how countries build technology. For example, he noted that building chip factories in the United States can be very expensive. He suggested that high costs might make it hard for those factories to compete with TSMC. His life shows how deep scientific knowledge and new business ideas can connect the whole world.
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